Korea

Seoul, South Korea -- A SILLY JOKE about Korea's impassioned new economic vision of itself and of the world has a dutiful mother cat trying hard to catch a mouse to feed her hungry babies. Finally, she corners the poor creature in his hole and tries to trick him out by barking like a dog.At first, the clever mouse thinks to him self, "No, that is only the cat barking . . ." But eventually he is taken in and comes out, only to be snatched swiftly away by the mother cat. As her children applaud, the mother tells them proudly, "And that . . . is globalization!"

Twenty-seven-old Minju Kim from Seoul, South Korea, found the early races a big yawn, so she and her friend Jieun Yi of Philadelphia stopped by the volleyball field. "For me, it's not that interesting," Kim said. She is visitig Yi, who is originally from Seoul, for a month. It is her first time in the United States. Yi married into a family full of horse racing fans. Today is her second trip to Preakness. She visited all three races last year, and said she perfers the Kentucky Derby for the outfits.

After spending his first year in Seoul, South Korea, James Taylor knows what it feels like to be in the minority."You walk through downtown Seoul and you've got people looking at you funny because you're American. They'll start telling you things like, 'Yankee go home,' " says Taylor, 17, originally of Yuma, Ariz."Now I know what some minorities go through (in the United States)," Taylor said.An outfielder, Taylor is one of three white Americans on the South Korean team in town for the Continental Amateur Baseball Association's 18-and-under World Series.

After four years of negotiating in and with North Korea, I cannot say that I have all of the answers to deal with a regime that defies the expectations of rational thinking, but I do have at least one of them: The Democratic People's Republic of Korea leadership, whoever happens to be the leader of the moment, whether Great, Dear, or Supreme, can only be dissuaded from chronically irresponsible behavior and from crossing a so-called red line (i.e.,...

Navy Seaman Brian M. Marousek recently took part in a military exercise in the Republic of Korea while assigned aboard the command ship USS Blue Ridge.The training exercise involved defending the Republic of Korea. The USS Blue Ridge is the flagship for the commander of the Navy's 7th Fleet, who is in charge of all U.S. naval operations in the Pacific Ocean from the International Date Line to the Arabian Sea.Seaman Marousek is the son of Mr. and Mrs. E. F. Marousek of Sykesville. The 1989 graduate of Liberty High School joined the Navy in January 1991.

TOKYO -- The Japanese government raised new questions yesterday about its contrition for past militarism by declaring that its annexation of Korea in 1910 was legal and was not forced on the Korean people.The latest assertions by Japan's official government spokesman are likely to add to anger in Asia at Japan's reluctance to apologize for wartime brutality. This remains a sensitive issue in the region.The statement from Tokyo is as if the German government were to declare that its invasion of France during World War II had been legal and amicable, because agreements were signed between Germany and the puppet government in Vichy.

Imagine 99 identical Barbie dolls in green Army fatigues and boots arrayed in parade rank before a crimson backdrop. It's an image of militaristic, monolithic power that pretty much sums up artist Mina Cheon's decidedly dim view of totalitarian rule. Cheon (pronounced CHUN) is a Korean-American artist who teaches at the Maryland Institute College of Art. In previous exhibitions, she's explored the tensions between her native South Korea and its communist neighbor to the north in a variety of media, including video, interactive multimedia installation and complicated, three-dimensional string sculptures.

"Korea," by Simon Winchester, 240 pages, Prentice Hall Press, New York, N.Y., $10.95.Books like Simon Winchester's "Korea" belong to a lineage that goes back to the beginning of time, or at least to that time when some blue-painted Anglo-Saxon cave dweller ambled off to the next moor then came back to tell his cavemates about it."Korea" is one of those British travel books in which a British writer describes the peculiarities of a people who are not British.These books are endlessly popular, especially here in the United States, which itself has been described in many, many British travel books over the last couple of centuries, often unfavorably.

Memories. Of numbing cold. Of sweltering heat that made men feel like they were marching through a sauna. Of 18-year-olds who knew little about ideology pitted against 18-year-olds who knew even less. Of rice paddies that extended beyond the horizon. Of a war politicians insisted wasn't a war. Of a nation that seemed intent, more than anything, to forget it ever sent its sons and daughters to fight in Korea.Bill Robinette remembers Korea. He remembers the frostbite that gripped his toes, the shrapnel that cost him an eye and punctured his brain, the comrades killed in action who never lived to enjoy the freedom they were sent overseas to protect.

MUCH AS AMERICANS rejoice at hosting this summer's Olympics in Atlanta, hundreds of millions of sports fans throughout the world believed the U.S. reached the big-time in 1994 by hosting the soccer World Cup. It was so huge it needed the stadium resources of the nation.What the rest of the world calls football and Americans soccer has staged these wars of the best national teams quadrennially since 1930, always in Europe or the Americas. Next World Cup, 1998, is in France. It's the bidding for the coveted 2002 World Cup, the first of the 21st century, the first in Asia, that made history.

The Pentagon is creating a new intelligence service aimed at gathering information on terrorist networks, weapons of mass destruction and other emerging concerns, a senior defense official said Monday. The new Defense Clandestine Service will draw several hundred officers from the existing Defense Intelligence Agency, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the classified program. The officers - some military, some civilian - will work alongside CIA counterparts in places such as Africa, whereal-Qaida has grown more active, and Asia, where Chinese military expansion and North Korean and Iranian weapons ambitions are drawing increasing U.S. concern.

The Orioles' signing of a 17-year-old high school sophomore from South Korea has drawn the ire of the Korean Baseball Organization, which is threatening to petition Major League Baseball for what it deems the fleecing of its young talent. The Orioles announced the signing of Kim Seong-min, South Korea's top left-handed high school pitching prospect, to a minor league contract Monday. While signing players out of South Korea -- including ones in high school -- is customary, Kim is just the second high school sophomore to be signed by a major league club and the first since 1997, Yonhap News Agency reported.

He was born into freedom in Pusan, South Korea, 60 years ago. Still, Jong C. Jang of Marriottsville spent much of his boyhood hearing his father, Ok Kyun Jang, rhapsodize about growing up in a place about 350 miles to the north. Families were close-knit in the mountainous region around Pyongyang , now the capital of North Korea, Ok Kyun Jang said. Life was stable and opportunity abounded. But that was before 1950, when a Communist army invaded the South, driving hundreds of thousands from their homes and helping give rise to one of the world's most harshly repressive dictatorships.

Perhaps there has been nothing more baffling to American eyes than the photographs of hordes of obviously grief-stricken North Koreans mourning the death of their 69-year-old dictator, Kim Jong Il. Under his reign and that of his father, the people of the globe's most closed society have remained mired in repression and poverty for 63 years. The genuine remorse, akin to what customarily is reserved for the passing of close personal family members, demonstrated the uncommon hold the departed leader had over his people.

The death of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il leaves a cloud of uncertainty over North Asia and complicates efforts by the U.S. and its allies to halt the nuclear weapons program that is the principal legacy of his 17-year rule. Kim was a canny and manipulative despot who repeatedly thwarted efforts by more powerful neighbors and adversaries like the United States to stabilize the Korean peninsula. Now that he is gone, the internal power struggle over succession could have unpredictable and perhaps dangerous consequences for the region and the world.

President Barack Obama's jobs bill, a relatively modest effort given the risks the economy faces and the toll that extended joblessness has taken on American workers, is bogged down in a divided Congress and is about to get more so. Senate leaders are moving to amend the plan to substitute a tax surcharge on millionaires for the provisions Mr. Obama had used to offset the bill's $447 billion cost. That's a perfectly sensible idea, given the massive tax benefits the rich have seen during the last decade, but it's even more dead on arrival in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives than Mr. Obama's initial plan, which relied on things like an end to tax breaks for oil companies and a smaller tax increase on families making more than $250,000 a year.

William E. "Bud" Crosland Sr., a retired career Army officer who served in Vietnam and Korea, died Jan. 22 of heart failure at Mercy Medical Center. He was 80. He was born and raised in Bennettsville, S.C., where he graduated from Bennettsville High School in 1947. After graduating in 1952 from The Citadel in Charleston, S.C., he was commissioned an Army officer. He served in the late 1960s in Vietnam and again in 1972, when he helped to oversee the withdrawal of South Korean troops from Vietnam.

While Otakon will be following its standard all-Japan-all-the-time formula again this year, organizers are stretching their cultural boundaries a bit. "We're actually starting to focus on some Korean pop culture as well," says Otakon spokesman Victor Albisharat. "That's been a growing market. " Among the offerings is the U.S. premiere of "Quick," from South Korean director Jo Beom-goo. "The best way I could describe is kind of a Korean version of 'Speed,'" Albisharat says. "Basically, the premise of this one is a delivery guy on a motorcycle, his first package is actually a bomb.

The U.S. is the world's leading humanitarian nation and has been one of the largest donors of emergency food to North Korea. The New York Times insists policymakers should continue to focus on the humanitarian virtues of giving food to madman Kim Jong Il while ignoring unpleasant realities, one of which is that doing so may not be in the security interests of the U.S., the region or the suffering citizens of North Korea. The UN says that North Korea will need international food assistance again this year, which is tragic.